This section will serve three general purposes. The first is the presentation of textual evidence that appears to create problems for the straightforwardly sensationalist reading of Hume’s theory of the passions that was just created. I will begin to make suggestions as to why it is difficult to read Hume as not providing an account of the passions with
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Kenny, A. (1963). Action, Emotion, and Will. Loudon, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Quoted in Mercer (1972), 24.
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strong cognitivist elements; that is to say, that Hume’s account of the passions has them essentially including thought content, such as beliefs and particular associations of ideas. Despite his own claims about their simplicity and the felt nature of their ‘essence,’ his analysis points to strong cognitive elements. The second purpose of this section will be to consider in some detail one of the stronger, and I would say more prominent, accounts of Hume as a cognitive theorist of emotion: that of Annette Baier. Her book, A Progression of Sentiment187 has been rightfully well-received by the scholarly community, and her reading of Hume on the passions has had broad influence. Therefore, the third task of this section will be to respond to Baier’s cognitivist reading, and to remind the reader that there is an authentic tension between her reading and things that Hume says that appear to place him squarely in the sensationalist camp. I will pay particular attention to her argument for a suggested distinction between emotion and passion that is different from my own. Offering a response to this will therefore constitute offering a response to what I take to be one of the better arguments that could be made against my account of the passion/emotion distinction in Part One of this work.
The general content of this last discussion will be as follows: I will present Baier’s argument concerning Hume’s calm and violent passion distinction as both support for her cognitivist reading, and potentially providing an objection to my reading of the
passion/emotion distinction in Hume. Baier argues that it is in the distinction between calm and violent passions in Hume that we can best understand his characterization of emotion, which she takes to be violence of passion. I will respond to this by arguing that Hume’s calm/violent distinction is not meant to outline a distinction between emotional and emotionless passions, along the lines of the discussion in Part One concerning the violent/calm passions. I will argue in particular that for Hume both violent and calm passions are attended by emotion, it is the experience of the emotion and passion over all that distinguishes them.
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Baier, A. (1991). A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
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But to be begin with, let us consider some of the evidence in Hume for a cognitivist reading. In much of her work on Hume, Baier188 makes a strong case for the claim that the three books of Hume’s Treatise are of a piece, and should be read not only in light of each other, but also as presenting a sort of progression of ideas and attitudes. One
particular claim she makes on this front is the suggestion that all of the epistemology of Book I is in service to the theories of passion and action in Books II and III. Baier argues that Hume dealt with ideas first in his work because the impressions he felt most
important to deal with were passions, and an understanding of these depends on an understanding of ideas. She points to the following quote from the very end of Hume’s
Abstract:
For as it is by means of thought only that any thing operates upon our passions, and as these are the only ties of our thoughts, they are really to us the cement of the universe, and all the operations of the mind must, in a great measure, depend on them.
The point Baier is seeking to remind us of is that for Hume the passions are indeed central to human experience, but they themselves must be understood to necessarily depend on the content of our thought given in ideas. Hence Hume could not address the topic of this “cement of the universe” without first educating his readers on the more cognitive content of the mind, and the relations and associations that govern ideas and belief.
The very fact that Hume identifies the passions as ‘impressions of reflection’ should be enough to tip us off to the more cognitive nature of these feelings. Fieser offers a brief history of the term, pointing out that,
The term "reflection" (in contrast to "sensation") can be found in Locke who used it to mean introspection, or the ideas of the mind when it takes notice of its own
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I am here considering in particular her essay, “Hume, the Reflective Women’s Epistemologist?” [Baier, A. (1994). Moral Prejudices. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.]
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operations. For Locke, though, this does not involve passions, which are for him "internal sensations." The word "reflection" becomes associated with the passions in Hutcheson's Essay on the nature and conduct of the passions and affections
(1728).189
‘Reflection’ is appropriately contrasted with ‘sensation’ here, and this contrast is of course found internal to Hume’s treatment of the category of impressions generally. On the one hand, what separates the impressions of sensation from the impressions of reflection might be said to be genealogy; the former arise spontaneously, “without antecedent perceptions,” while the latter “proceed from” pre-existing mental content (2.1.1.1). Fieser’s brief historical comment above reminds us that following Hutcheson, Hume was adopting the introspective term ‘reflection,’ previously used by Locke in discussions of ideas, belief and reason, and applying it to a certain kind of affective experience. Therefore, another way to distinguish between impressions of sensation for Hume and impressions of reflection is to consider their interaction with pre-existing mental content. Indeed, if we are to hold that we can instantly distinguish between a feeling that qualifies as an impression of sensation (say, the pain of stubbing my toe), and a feeling that qualifies as an impression of reflection (say, the pain of being spurned by a lover), the most obvious difference we can appeal to is the belief and idea content of the latter, versus the spontaneously arising bodily pain of the former. There certainly seems to be a case for the claim that were I to suddenly wake up feeling one of these two things, I would be able to correctly identify each as an impression of sensation and an impression of reflection appropriately, without considering their causal story. Something about the experience of the two pains themselves would be different. And that difference would be derived from the connection to my thoughts.
Of course, a James-Lange theorist may well object to this example, and claim that when presented with nothing but the two feelings, we would find the content of both to consist in bodily sensation. This would mean the distinction for Hume between his two kinds of
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impression would really be the differences in causal account. But I do not think this is the case for Hume. He may at times refer to the physical underpinnings of impressions, but as I have argued above, his focus is on the felt aspect, and for Hume there is an important felt difference between the pain of an impression of sensation and the pain of an
impression of reflection. Such a distinction, it would seem, could only be explained by insisting on the role that certain thought content plays in the experience of the passions. The strongest case for cognitive content in passions in Hume is of course to be found in his account of the indirect passions. Donald Davidson190 made much of this in his well- known article, “Hume’s Cognitive Theory of Pride,” where he argues that “Hume’s account of pride is best suited to what may be called propositional pride.”191 Hume’s characterization of pride is that we are proud of something, such that claims like, “she was proud that she had made a delicious cake” are accurate descriptions of emotions. He argues,
It is commonly thought that in Hume’s opinion, to be proud that one is clever (say) is just to experience a certain “ultimate felt quality.” This would certainly be wrong, since it would provide no way of distinguishing between being proud that one is clever and being proud that one is kind to kangaroos… [B]eing proud that
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Davidson, D. (1976). “Hume’s Cognitive Theory of Pride.” The Journal of Philosophy, 73(19): 744-757. It may be appropriate to here remind the reader that Davidson does not take himself to be making a strong case for his reading on pride in Hume to have been precisely what Hume intended—rather, he takes it that these strongly cognitivist aspects are to be found in Hume, whether Hume realized it or not, and that large parts of his account may be read as offering a kind of cognitivist theory of the passions. Davidson (unlike Baier, who argues for a consistent reading of Hume) would likely tend to fall into a camp that sees Hume as having some tension in his theory of the passions, as he appears to want to characterize them as at once essentially sensational and essentially cognitive in nature.
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one is clever is a complex state of which the simple impression of “pride” is only one element.192
Though pride of course tends to involve feeling, also essential to it, even on Hume’s account, is the particular relation of ideas that obtains in the double-relation of ideas and impressions that Hume takes to be the necessary attending circumstance of pride.
Davidson points out that the beliefs and ideas conjoined in this relation “must amount to predication for Hume,”193 and this predication is essential to distinguishing between different instances of pride, something we certainly can and do do. Davidson reminds us that for Hume, “the effect of belief is to raise up a simple idea to an equality with our impressions, and bestow on it a like influence on the passions” (1.3.10.3) and that “belief is almost absolutely requisite to the exciting our passions” (1.3.10.4). Belief then plays a central role in the formation and distinguishing of the content of our passions.
The details of the belief content in pride are of course provided by the double-relation of ideas and impressions, which Davidson argues is not only Hume’s way of explaining the causal relation between pride and certain beliefs and attitudes, but also the logical relation between them. Though pride is typically experienced with a felt component, it is
necessarily experienced with a judgmental component. In fact, Davidson argues that the judgment is identical to the passion of pride. On this account the relationship between our believed judgment that we are clever, or have made a delicious cake, and our pride is not contingent, but necessary. And to those who may object that Hume’s account of the role of beliefs and ideas is causal in nature, Davidson responds that “there is no good
argument to show that causal relations rule out necessary connections.”194 Hume may have presented them as causes, but his analysis of the passions themselves reveals logical relations that make certain beliefs and ideas necessary constituents of the passions.
192 Davidson (1976), 744-745. 193 Davidson (1976), 746. 194 Davidson (1976), 755.
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Though it may seem that a Davidsonian account is too quick to dismiss much of what Hume says concerning the essentially felt nature of the passions, there are additional reasons found in the text to lean towards this kind of strongly cognitivist reading of Hume. Consider, for example, Hume’s claim at 2.2.2.6 that when the appropriate relations of ideas for producing pride are lacking, “’Tis plain, that to consider the matter
a priori, no emotion of any kind can reasonably be expected.” This language suggests the kind of logical relation between certain beliefs and pride that Davidson was suggesting. Hume goes on in this passage to say that our “reasoning a priori is confirm’d by
experience,” but the mention of a priori reasoning is telling: passions have certain characteristic cognitive requirements that inform their very conceptualization. I only call my feeling pride when I am aware of my holding the appropriate beliefs. Without these, I would surely only be able to identify what I feel as some kind of pleasure.
The argument that belief content is necessary in identifying Humean passions gains more support from his insistence on the possibility of calmly experienced passions. Consider, for example, the following:
Now ‘tis certain there are certain calm desires and tendencies, which tho’ they be real passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their effects than by the immediate feelings or sensations. (2.3.3.8)
Hume is arguing here that we take ourselves to be motivated by reason at times because we assume that mental events are the same if they don’t feel different to us. This
assumption of course leads to our confusion of reason and the calm passions. Implicit in this explanation seems to be this claim: feeling is in fact not enough to distinguish between certain kinds of mental events. What then is enough? Attending circumstances, observations about our beliefs, attitudes, etc (2.3.3.8, see also 2.2.5.3). But these then seem to be more than merely causal circumstances; they appear to be constitutive of the passions. How else is it that a calm passion may be identified as a passion, if there is no characteristic feeling constituting its ‘essence’? Therefore, the more cognitive aspects of
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the passions must be essential in distinguishing them—passions must be characterized by more than mere feeling.195
Passions are not only distinguished in some cases by their cognitive content, but Hume also argues that this content is often what determines how they will interact with each other. Consider this passage at 2.3.9.16:
Contrary passions are not capable of destroying each other, except when their contrary movements exactly rencounter, and are opposite in their direction, as well as in the sensation they produce. This exact rencounter depends upon the relations of those ideas, from which they are deriv’d, and is more or less perfect , according to the degrees of relation.
Whether contrary passions may cancel each other out depends on the relations of ideas connected to the passions in question. Therefore, in such circumstances, the interaction of the passions, the effect they have on each other and ultimately on our motivation, has as much to do with cognitive aspects of the passions as it does with the feeling and impulse behind them. Hume goes on say of this kind of example,
The influence of the relation of ideas is plainly seen in this whole affair. If the objects of the contrary passions be totally different, the passions are like two opposite liquors in different bottles, which have no influence on each other. If the objects be intimately connected, the passions are like an alcali and an acid, which, being mingled, destroy each other. If the relation be more imperfect, and consists in the contradictory views of the same object, the passions are like oil and
vinegar, which, however mingled, never perfectly unite and incorporate. (2.3.9.17)
The last two metaphors used here are telling. It is not aspects external to the fluids he discusses that determine whether they mix, ‘imperfectly’ coexist, or destroy each other,
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but rather their internal natures. In these cases the metaphors seem to suggest that it is not merely causal circumstances that determine how two passions will interact, but also cognitive content that is in some way constitutive of them.
Finally, recall that Hume’s stated view on how we are to characterize a passion softens from his initial statements about their simple, immediately felt natures [“their sensations, or the peculiar emotions they excite in the soul, and which constitute their very being and essence” (2.1.5.4)]. Consider 2.2.9.2, a passage I made much of in Part One:
But that we may understand the full force of this double relation, we must
consider, that it is not the present sensation alone or momentary pain or pleasure, which determines the character of any passion, but the whole bent or tendency of it from the beginning to the end.
The passions may have distinctive felt components, but they are only fully characterized when our experience of them as wholes, including relations of ideas, beliefs, and
resulting tendencies, is considered. This claim we might pair with Hume’s mention at 2.2.2.7 that there is a difference between vague feelings of pain or pleasure, and a
“…constant and establish’d passion.” This is argued in the case of the indirect passions in particular, but could be said of all the passions Hume characterizes in terms of beliefs and ideas. These feelings appear to have authentic cognitive content.
Some reminder at this point of why Hume is so often given a sensationalist reading may be useful. As has been pointed out above, one of the main sources for the strongly non- cognitive reading is found at 2.3.3.5, which I will include in full here:
A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains no representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high. ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that this passion can be oppos’d by, or contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction
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consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects which they represent.
Note that there is something somewhat confusing about Hume’s claim here that passions have no representational content. Consider Hume’s accounts of the characterization of individual passions, such as pride. His analysis of this and other indirect passions seems very much to depend on the way our ideas interact with each other, to the extent that